


homecoming

by kaihire



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, it's only mentioned in passing, marine!stiles, maybe AU-ish?, post-S3, the person who dies is one of the "adults"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 17:54:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaihire/pseuds/kaihire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That's the thing about time passing: people move away, they go on with their lives, and if you happen to be deployed overseas on active duty then those lives no longer involve you.</p>
<p>When it's time to come home, Stiles isn't sure there's anything worth coming home to. But he just might be wrong.</p>
<p>
  <i>(A little melancholy, a little morose, but hopefully avoids most tropes.)</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> **ardatli asked a question:**
> 
> _I’ve been reading a few ‘Older BAMF Stiles comes back to Beacon Hills’ fics lately (he left to get away from the constant danger, or to avoid Derek’s rejection, or joined the Marines, or…) I’d love to see your take on something like that. So: Future fic; an older, wiser, Stiles, with awesomeness (magic, maybe?) of his own, returns to Beacon Hills. Sterek (eventually?) ensues._

Seven years didn’t feel like a long time.

When he broke it down and thought about it, yeah, each year had been long, longer than it should have been, and lonely as fuck. Each year, it seemed like people grew more distant. That was how things worked, and Stiles knew that. Not everyone in their little circle of friends had been thrilled with his decision to enlist—Lydia, especially, had been on his ass to go to college. And he wanted that, he really did, but after the whole Alpha pack thing what he really wanted was to feel strong. To not feel like the little lanky kid who could kinda, sorta, maybe do things with spells sometimes. He wanted to feel like he could be an asset instead of a liability, like he could protect rather than always being protected. His father’s death had just sort of sealed the deal, though at least it had been fast, in the line of duty, and he’d saved a kid’s life, and while it cut Stiles down to the core, he knew it had been precisely the way his father would have wanted to go out. He couldn’t begrudge him that, even if it left him without any family.

At first, the letters came as frequently as mail was doled out.

Then, they started to drop off. Everyone started to move away from Beacon Hills which had, once again, become just a little sleepy town well off of the supernatural radar. They’d done that. They’d accomplished that, but now everyone wanted to move on with their lives.

Boyd was a big-shot lawyer in LA. Erica had somehow ended up in accounting. Lydia was sweeping the math world off its knees from her home in Antwerp. Scott and Allison were on-again, though they’d decided they would never marry—not that it stopped them from being utterly in love and committed to each other. Last Stiles had heard, they were out in Chicago; Allison was in grad school and Scott was working as a personal trainer. Isaac had hung around town the longest, out of loyalty to Derek, but now he was somewhere up in Maine. Stiles had heard through the grapevine that he’d gotten money to start a safe house for abused kids.

And that left only Derek, presumably, but Derek had never written a single letter. Of course not. But everyone had more or less filled Stiles in about what he was doing anyway, about how he’d finally gotten zoning to re-build the Hale house and that it was sort of a half-way home for lost Omegas who’d roll into town, get a bit of training, and then get put into contact with an Alpha whose pack fit their needs. It sounded like Derek was busy but happy—or at least, as happy as Derek could ever get.

When the letters trickled down, Stiles was stationed in Lebanon. The first time there was nothing for him, he figured it was a fluke. But then no letters came after, and he knew the inevitable had happened: too much time had passed, and everyone had moved on.

Everyone except him.

He was the only guy he knew, save for one “lifer”, who dreaded going home. Home wasn’t home anymore. Home was an empty house with the furniture covered in dust cloths. Home was going to the grocery store and not seeing any familiar faces.

Home was isolation.

But he couldn’t stop the plane from landing or from his bag being tossed at him. The Marines poured off the plane and onto the tarmac, spreading out like an army of ants into the waiting arms of their family members. Stiles just kept his head down, exchanged a hug or two with a buddy, said hi to someone’s daughter, and slung the bag over his shoulder. He was half-way to the exit gate before he noticed the familiar black car parked on the other side, and the familiar black jacket. Derek was leaning against the front quarter panel, arms crossed over his chest. Stiles’ heart kicked up a notch and he trotted the rest of the way there.

“Hey.”

“Hey. I thought you could use a ride.”

How had Derek even known he was flying in today?

“Yeah, thanks. I was just going to hoof it.”

Derek was looking at him, and Stiles wasn’t surprised. He was almost an inch taller than Derek now, and while he’d never build the same sort of bulky muscle that Derek had, he had filled out the way any other Marine did. His head was buzzed shorter than usual, his skin a little more tan than it had ever been, and there was a scar on his left cheek, nothing too dramatic, where he’d caught a bit of shrapnel with his face.

Derek, on the other hand, looked exactly the same. Fuckin’ werewolves.

The older man finally seemed to snap out of it and stood up fully. Stiles thought he was going to go for the car door, but instead Derek reached up, touching the scar with the pad of his thumb. Stiles swallowed convulsively, saw Derek’s eyes dart to the bob of his Adam’s apple. He withdrew his hand, then seemed to hesitate before reaching out to tug Stiles’ bag off of his shoulder.

“I have a guest room ready for you. I figured you wouldn’t want to go back to your house right away.” Because it took one to know one. Stiles swallowed again and watched as Derek put his bag in the trunk of the car, then looked at him expectantly. “Well? Get in, I want to get out of here before everyone clogs up the exits.”

Stiles snapped out of it and got into the passenger side. He didn’t say anything as Derek pulled them out onto the main road, but he thought he could see Derek glance at him a few times out of the corner of his eye. It was enough to make his knee jiggle nervously, because old habits died hard, because ADHD didn’t just magically go away with military training. The corners of Derek’s mouth softened, though it wasn’t quite a smile, and he flicked on the radio.

“Welcome back, Stiles.”

And yeah, there was that. Maybe home wasn’t going to be so bad after all.


End file.
